Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Oh, come on.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am sorry. There is not a timeframe—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Has the Minister finished?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No.

We have talked about the exports. The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, brought up wind farms. These are part of our green energy policies, but as I said before, these wind farms need steel, and I would rather be using steel produced in this country from coke that comes from a net-zero mine than importing it from elsewhere. I will look at Hansard. If anything else needs responding to, I will do so in writing.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Climate Change Committee and a former Minister who had to do precisely this: act in a quasi-judicial manner. So I have to say to my noble friend that it would have been perfectly possible for the Secretary of State to turn this down and not agree with the inspector. Can my noble friend explain how the Government are going to say to the rest of the world that they preferred the judgment of a generalist planner to the expert advice of the Climate Change Committee, the International Energy Agency, my right honourable friend Alok Sharma, who led our delegation for net zero at COP 26, and, as the noble Baroness opposite referenced, the chairman of the Climate Crisis Select Committee? It seems we prefer the reference of a planner to all the expert advice that the Government have.

Secondly, how do the Government maintain that this is carbon neutral when it does not take into account the burning of the 85% of this coal that will be exported? We do not know whether it will go to the European Union or to countries that have no interest in fighting for climate change; it could go anywhere.

Thirdly, can my noble friend the Minister explain something? There is a plenty of coking coal in the world. No one is going to dig less coking coal because we are doing it. How do we know that we will be able to compete with them? After all, they are not going to do it to the standards of which my noble friend has spoken.

Why did the Government not say no to this and instead ensure that the 500 jobs would be replaced by jobs in new renewables and nuclear generation? This shows the rest of the world that, when push comes to shove, we do not up stand up for what we promised.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords—